Lowering the Sultan's Flag: Sovereignty and Decolonization in Coastal Kenya

On 17 December 1961, Ronald Ngala faced an audience of some five hundred supporters in Malindi, a town on the East African coast of the Indian Ocean. The crowd had come to watch Ngala lower the flag that symbolized colonial rule along the coast. This was not the Union flag of Great Britain, but the red flag of the Sultan of Zanzibar. It flew over a number of towns located along the ten-mile coastal strip “Protectorate” of what was then Kenya Colony and Protectorate. The flag symbolized this latter legal distinction, representing the sovereignty that the Sultan of Zanzibar retained over the coastal strip of Kenya after leasing its administration to Britain in a treaty signed in 1895. The flag's lowering was an act of political theatre—Ngala's supporters had hastily arranged the flag and flagpole, while the Sultan's real flag flew over the Malindi courts office nearby. The crowd celebrated its lowering with loud and wild cheers. Anxious onlookers later complained that Ngala had performed an act of treason. In Zanzibar, tense with the specter of racial violence, local press expressed outrage at this insult to the Sultan.

3 The terms “Arab” and “Swahili” raise thorny issues of coastal identity. To abbreviate an interminable debate, the identity of “Arab” in coastal East Africa may indicate ancestral origins in Arabia, but certainly marks a claim to high social status. “Swahili” is predominantly an “etic” term that classifies (however problematically) people who have adopted coastal culture, including not only Swahili language and Islam, but also plausible membership in local lineages. In identifying with coastal culture, “Arab” and “Swahili” categorically differentiate themselves from mainland Africans.

5 The authoritative study in this vein remains Hinsley, F. H., Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2d ed., 1986). Also working within a European framework but alive to sovereignty's instability is Sheehan, James J., “The Problem of Sovereignty in European History,” American Historical Review111 (2006): 1–15.

6 These typologies, as well as “domestic” sovereignty (the exercise of control within borders) and “interdependence” sovereignty (the control of borders), are from Steven Krasner's influential Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). Krasner admits that “Westphalian” sovereignty relates little to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, and emerges only in the late eighteenth century; he adopts the term because of its common usage. Ibid., 20.

7 Radhika Mongia, “Historicizing State Sovereignty: Inequality and the Form of Equivalence,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49 (2007): 384–411; and Antony Anghie, “Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law,” Harvard International Law Journal 40 (1999): 1–81.

8Teschke, Benno, The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations (London: Verso, 2003), 245. For Teschke, sovereignty was literally the family business of rentier royals; its modern transformation only came about with the international domination of the Hanoverian British state controlled by capitalist landed classes.

9 This paradoxical quality of sovereignty emerges in Krasner's historical realist account (“organized hypocrisy”), and more explicitly in Schmitt's metaphysical tract Political Theology, which asserts that the sovereign is “he who decides on the exception,” for “the legal order rests on a decision and not on a norm.” Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 5, 10. Agamben elaborates: “The sovereign is, at the same time, outside and inside the juridical order.” Agamben, Giorgio, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 15. Agamben's paradox is illuminated in Rasch, William, Sovereignty and Its Discontents (London: Birkbeck Law Press, 2004), ch. 5.

10Bose, Sugata, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 25. He quotes from Gupta, Ashin Das and Pearson, M. N., India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800 (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1987), 13.

11 For useful overviews, see Pouwels, Randall, Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Horton, Mark and Middleton, John, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); and Nurse, Derek and Spear, Thomas, The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800–1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985).

13 For an overview, see Glassman, Jonathon, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995); for Mombasa, see F. J. Berg, “Mombasa under the Busaidi Sultanate: The City and Its Hinterland in the 19th Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1975).

17 Islamic notions of sovereignty begin with recognition of the sovereignty of God (Al-Malik) over man, expressed in the tellingly redundant name Al-Malik-ul-Mulk, while man's deputized sovereignty on earth is Al-Hakimiyya or “governorship.” Khan, M. A. Muqtedar, “Sovereignty in Islam as Human Agency,” Ijtihad1, 10 (1999), at www.ijtihad.org.

19Lewis, Bernard, The Political Language of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 43–53.

20Jackson, Robert, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. 23–31, 86–91. Jackson's “positive” and “negative” sovereignty roughly equate to Krasner's “domestic” and “international legal” sovereignty, respectively. Critics of Jackson decry the hypocrisy, manipulation, and inequality that infuse the post-war sovereignty system, but do little to refute his core arguments. See Grovogui, Siba N'Zatioula, Sovereigns, Quasi-Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

23Cooper, Frederick, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 468.

24 Khalifa bin Harub died on 9 October 1960 at age eighty-one, succeeded by his less popular son Abdallah bin Khalifa. He in turn died on 1 July 1963, succeeded by his still less popular son Jamshid bin Abdallah, who was overthrown on 12 January 1964 and fled to exile in Britain.

25 An 1886 Anglo-German agreement delineated the Sultan's sovereignty from the coastline to ten miles into the interior.

26 The text of the 1895 treaty is in The Kenya Coastal Strip: Report of the Commissioner, Cmnd. 1585 (London: HMSO, 1961). Unlike Germany, which purchased outright the Sultan's rights to the coast of modern Tanzania, Britain leased Kenya's coast from the Sultan. £200,000 was Germany's purchase price and therefore estimated to be the Sultan's interest in IBEAC. Britain theoretically “borrowed” this sum—quite literally the same £200,000 paid to the Sultan by Germany—in a loan repayable at 3 percent interest, without reference to principle repayment. Rent was reduced to £10,000 per annum in 1924 after the Sultan ceded Jubaland to Italian Somalia. Salim, Swahili-Speaking Peoples, 73; Annexe II of EAC(57)3 entitled “Zanzibar and the Kenya Protectorate,” Sept. 1957, CO 822/1810/3.

29 Britain brought its Malaya protectorate model to Zanzibar, where the British Resident ran the government in the name of the prince. Metcalf, Thomas, Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 42.

33 “A Short Description of the Twelve Tribes” by Hyder Mohammed, n.d. [c. Dec. 1944], KNA DC/MSA/2/1/172/77. In fact, these customs allowances had ended by 1900, though certain recipients retained grants until their death, and a few mistakenly paid after death, until the liwali advised ending all payments in 1921. Minute, 16 Aug. 1934, CO 533/442/13.

34 Photographs of treaties in KNA DC/MSA/2/1/172/78. On this conflict, see Salim, Swahili-Speaking Peoples, ch. 5.

36Willis, Justin, Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 74–76, 109–12; Strobel, Margaret, Muslim Women in Mombasa 1890–1975 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 41. Whereas Willis maintains that ‘Mijikenda’ identities were largely products of colonial-era patronage networks confronting state power, Spear argues they have a deeper pre-colonial history. Spear, Thomas, The Kaya Complex: A History of the Mijikenda Peoples of the Kenya Coast to 1900 (Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1978).

37 President, Central Arab Association to Kenya Governor, 5 Mar. 1950, KNA OP/1/546/43/1. Representation in Kenya's Legislative Council was defined racially, with Arabs holding one elected seat and one appointed. The colonial administration felt Arab elected representatives functioned badly in office because of their poor English, and preferred to retain the appointed position.

40 Acting PC Coast to all District Commissioners, 21 Feb. 1946, KNA DC/Lamu/2/11/19/49. Small flags were flown over all district headquarters on the coast. Acting PC Coast to District Commissioner [hereafter DC] Kilifi and Lamu, 10 Mar. 1947, KNA DC/Lamu/2/11/19/59.

50 A year later, a reporter wrote, “It took some effort to be cognizant of the ties attaching this coast to the Sultanate,” but noted that the seventieth-birthday celebration “drove home to those who had been ignorant the fact that Mombasa still holds on its shores a community cherishing an affectionate regard for the Sultan of Zanzibar.” Mombasa Times, 29 Sept. 1950.

67 Nassir's most articulate expression of political leadership is captured in his cyclostyled petition to the Coast Provincial Commissioner that attacks the elitism of Mombasa's Arab bureaucratic and political leadership, entitled “Pwani ya Kenya,” 4 Feb. 1960, in KNA CA/10/126/11. The Kenya Government had in 1952 ‘promoted’ the Twelve Tribes to Arab status.

69 Liwalis, Mudirs, and Kadhis of Kenya Protectorate to Maudling, n.d. [c. Feb. 1962], CO 822/2151/84. Hyder Kindy, for example, did not publicly express his views on mwambao and later dismissed it as a “fiasco” in his memoir Life and Politics in Mombasa, written while employed by Kenyatta's government. But in fact he was a staunch supporter of autonomy; see his petition to Robertson Commission, 19 Oct. 1961, CO 894/13/10.

70 S.L.O. Intelligence Survey for period ending 10 Nov. 1948, CO 537/4340/1. Before this trip, Hinawy had requested official papers documenting the relationship between the Sultan and Britain. Glenday to Cohen, 16 July 1948, CO 537/4706A/1.

74 On Radio Cairo's Swahili-language broadcasts, see James Brennan, “Radio Cairo and the Decolonization of East Africa, 1953–1964,” in Christopher Lee, ed., Bandung and Beyond (forthcoming).

75Mombasa Times, 28 May 1956; Salim, “Mwambao,” 216–17.

76Sauti ya MADU, 10 Aug. 1958.

77Scotsman, 16 June 1960, in CO 822/2163/28.

78 On KANU-KADU competition, see Kyle, Politics, ch. 7; and David Anderson, “‘Yours in the Struggle for Majimbo’: Nationalism and the Party Politics of Decolonisation in Kenya, 1955 to 1964,” Journal of Contemporary History 39 (2005): 547–64.

84Nye, Joseph, Pan Africanism and East African Integration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 133. Nyerere had founded the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA) in 1958, and worked to establish the East African Common Services Organization in June 1961. Ibid.

85 Renison to Webber, 10 June 1960, CO 822/2163/27. The Robertson Commission later found a £955,000 shortfall between revenue and expenditure on the coastal strip. Kenya Coastal Strip, 10.

86 At an East African Governors' meeting held on 16 June 1961, consensus emerged that it would be best to establish the strip as a High Commission territory, so that it could later become a federal territory after Kenya reached internal self-government. Extract note at CO 822/2164/70. The East African High Commission was renamed the East African Common Services Organisation that same year.

92 These public threats are chronicled in Memorandum of Coastal League to Robertson, App. E, 7 Oct. 1961, CO 894/12/6.

93 Petitions are in CO 894 series.

94 Sheehan, “The Problem of Sovereignty,” 2–3.

95 These norms color the historiography of the Swahili Coast. See Salim, Swahili-Speaking Peoples; and Pouwels, Horn and Crescent. For a critical perspective on the meaning and contestation of these norms along the nineteenth-century coast, see Glassman, Feasts and Riot.

105 Note of meeting between Robertson and CPP delegation, Mombasa, 20 Oct. 1961, CO 894/2. Robertson deemed it impossible to expect a mwambao state to “be able to prevent infiltration and invasion by further and successive waves of up-country tribes-people in search of work, land and facilities.” Moreover, “if a hostile up-country Kenya Government wished to excite agitation and disorder, the new State would not be in a position to defend itself from attack,” creating a situation that would jeopardize “the safety and the peaceful development not only of the new State itself, but of the whole of East Africa.” Kenya Coastal Strip, 23.

109 In 1957, nearly half of the protectorate land was Crown land, a third “native land units,” a fifth alienated land, and the remainder settlement and communal lands. EAC(57)3, CO 822/1810/3.

110 In one such case, a public rent strike meeting among African squatters was followed by an “assault by squatters of an Arab family following agitation to refuse to pay rent,” which “caused great alarm and resulted in a deputation from local Arab landowners.” Malindi Intelligence Report, Mar. 1959, KNA CB/18/18/28.

127 On rhetorical violence and racial thought in Zanzibar, see Jonathon Glassman, “Sorting Out the Tribes: The Creation of Racial Identities in Colonial Zanzibar's Newspaper Wars,” Journal of African History 41 (2000): 395–428.

131 See minutes of F. D. Webber, 22 Mar. 1962, and W.B.L. Monson, 26 Mar. 1962, in CO 822/2157. Records of the four Lancaster House meetings held on 8, 9, and 12 March and 7 April 1962 are in CO 822/2159 and CAB 133/198 (National Archives, Kew).

143Daily Nation (Nairobi), 20 June 2007. This “council” is led by Omar Mwamndwazi and is comprised principally of young Digo men seeking to establish local land rights against “upcountry” expropriation. It springs from the “Kaya Bombo” group which—then in the name of majimbo—raided Likoni police station in Mombasa in August 1997, killed six police officers, and stole over forty guns. They then turned their violence to “upcountry” people and businesses, killing over a hundred and displacing some one hundred thousand people. Noel Mwakugu, “Kenya's Coastal Rebels,” BBC News, 8 Apr. 2005; Amos Kareithi, “Revisiting Ten-Mile Strip Controversy,” Sunday Standard (Nairobi), 30 Sept. 2007; Misol, 24–64.